From TechCrunch, December 5:
Six years ago, I asked Sam Altman at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco how OpenAI, with its complicated corporate structure, would make money. He said that someday, he’d ask the AI. When everyone snickered, he added, “You can laugh. It’s all right. But it really is what I actually believe.”
He wasn’t kidding.
Sitting again in front of an audience, this time across Max Hodak, the co-founder and CEO of Science Corp., I can’t help but remember that moment with Altman. Pale-complexioned Hodak, wearing jeans and a black zip-up sweatshirt, looks more like he’s going to jump into a mosh pit than pitch a company valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. But he’s got a sly sense of humor that keeps the room engaged.
Hodak started programming when he was six, and as an undergraduate at Duke, he worked his way into the lab of Miguel Nicolelis, a pioneering neuroscientist who has since become publicly critical of commercial brain-computer interface ventures. In 2016, Hodak co-founded Neuralink with Elon Musk, serving as its president and essentially running day-to-day operations until 2021.
When I ask what he learned working alongside Musk, Hodak describes a specific pattern. “We got into lots of situations together where something would happen. In my mind, I’d have two diametrically opposed possible solutions, and I would bring them to him, and I’d be like, ‘Is it A or B?’ And he’d look at it and be like, ‘It’s definitely B,’ and the problem would never come back.”
After a few years of this, Hodak took what he’d learned and roped in three former Neuralink colleagues to launch Science Corp. about four years ago. Like Altman, Hodak describes his team’s improbable goal so placidly that I find myself believing that the limits of cognition are about to be overcome sooner than most of us realize. And that he’ll be among those who make it happen.
As I was doomscrolling…
While I’ve been consumed with the AI data center craziness and the talent poaching wars, momentum has been building in the background.According to World Economic Forum data, nearly 700 companies around the world have at least some ties to brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, including some tech giants. In addition to Neuralink, Microsoft Research has run a dedicated BCI project for the last seven years. Apple partnered earlier this year with Synchron, backed by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, to create a protocol that lets BCIs control iPhones and iPads. Even Altman is reportedly helping to stand up a Neuralink rival.
And in August, China released its “Implementation Plan for Promoting Innovation and Development of the BCI Industry,” targeting core technological breakthroughs by 2027, and aiming to become the global leader by 2030.
Much of the neuroscience isn’t new. “A legitimate criticism of the BCI companies is that they aren’t doing new neuroscience,” Hodak said. “Decoding cursor control or robotic arm control from a human – people have been doing that for 30 years.”
What’s new, however, is the engineering. “The innovation at Neuralink is making [a device] small enough and low-power enough that you can fully implant it and close the skin, and have something that isn’t an infection risk. That genuinely was new."....
....MUCH MORE
Related:
"A wave of biological privacy laws may be coming as tech gadgets capture our brain waves"
Those gadgets'll get nuthin' from me.
Musk's "Neuralink Will Offer Telepathy and then Brain Control of Teslabots"
Throw in Full Self Driving and paraplegics will recover a lot of agency/autonomy.
Watch Out Elon: China Unveils Neuralink Competitor
"Big Tech sees neurotechnology as its next AI frontier" (ELON)
The Race To Put Implants In Your Head Is Heating Up
"Folks Lining Up for Elon Musk's Brain Implants"
Now I'm as open-minded as the next guy, so to speak but...ummm...après vous, M. Musk, après vous.
And many, many more going back to 2016.
And the outro from "Brain implant startup backed by Bezos and Gates is testing mind-controlled computing on humans":
The city of Chicago should probably keep an eye on this. There are neighborhoods, Austin, Garfield Park, Englewood, where you will see paralyzed young men out and about in their mobility chairs and you realize that even though it is the killings that make the headlines the fact is the wounds and injuries are awfully grievous and affect many more people.
If interested we have a few dozen posts on Mind- Machine interfaces including on the work of Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, M.D., PhD and his laboratory at Duke University Medical Center.
"Disruptions: Brain Computer Interfaces Inch Closer to Mainstream"
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
—Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future (revised edition, 1973)
- "Microsoft wants to patent mind control" (MSFT)
- (Quantum Computer Maker) D-Wave Founder's New Startup Combines AI, Robots, and Monkeys in Exo-Suits
- More Than You Might Want To Know About Elon Musk's Neuralink
- Musk's Mind-Machine Interface, Neuralink, Reports Progress: Monkeys Now Playing Pong
- Questions America Wants Answered: Would Elon Musk's Neuralink Solve All of Accounting’s Problems?
- DARPA: "Six Paths to the Nonsurgical Future of Brain-Machine Interfaces"
And on Professor Nicolelis:
"In Scientific First, Researchers Link Two Rats' Brains via Computer" (What's next, the paralyzed walk?)
Ya gotta love this guy. He's a showman but he publishes in open-access journals, in effect letting the whole world have at it. More after the jump.
I knew this was going to happen. Knew it. Afraid to say it, sound like crazy person, but knew it. Links below.
Here's The Most Advanced Human Brain-to-Brain Interface
Monkey Steers Wheelchair With It's Little Monkey Mind
July 2015
Mind-Meld: Neuroscientists Link Three Monkey Brains Into Living Computer
Huh, The Brain/Machine Interface Biz Made Some Progress Last Month
March 2, 2013
Update: Not Everyone is Impressed With Dr. Miguel Nicolelis' Latest Intercontinental Mind-Meld
Feb. 23, 2013
Maybe He Didn't See the Part Where the Monkey Controlled a Robot on the Other Side of the World With Its Little Monkey Brain
Feb. 21, 2013
UPDATED--"A leading neuroscientist says Kurzweil’s Singularity isn’t going to happen...."
